Saturday, January 17, 2009

Bleakly Weekly Menu

This is how the backyard view was in summer.....

And this what I see now...

I desperately needed a warm splash of color to fix the chilling cold outside and my Friday evening tea just set the mood...

A quick recap of what I cooked last weekend for this week. This time it was better and I didn't have to cook anything until Thursday except for the odd pasta, Big Sis S's school lunch and some scrambled eggs.

With two girls, one of whom craves attention like Jennifer Aniston and other who voices protests akin to Mamta (banerjee) if left alone for two minutes, I don't really want to spend weekday evenings cooking and neither do I want to eat outside evrytime. I find the cook ahead pretty convenient and have also shifted my grocery day to mid week. This way Baby A's nanny chops all my veggies before she leaves on Friday and then cooking become pretty easy actually.

D has been delegated with the duty of feeding us either outsourced or self implemented food for Friday nights and Saturday, so it has been pretty interesting so far. On cold winter Friday nights, a new avtaar of Campbell tomato soup (a different avtaar every time he has served it so far, two to be precise) spiced up with green chillies and such graces our table with garlic bread. I am really looking forward to see what comes up tomorrow.

Aloo Gobi -- A dry potatoes and cauliflower preparation that I picked up from Sailaja's Blog. The taste was different from what we are used to but we liked it, actually I liked it more with white rice than with the tortilla I pack for lunch

Aloo Methi-- This is an all time favorite and goes well both with roti and rice, better with roti I think

Aloo Bhindi -- This is a potato okra stir fry done the Bengali way. The oil is tempered with Paanch Phoron and Dry Red Chillies and okra and potatoes are fried with a pinch of turmeric and salt.

Toor Dal with Methi -- I deviated from my favorite Masoor Dal to Toor for this week inspired by Indira. Pressure cooked about 1 and 1/2 cup of Toor Dal with one biggish red onion, one chopped tomato, 1 cup of fresh methi leaves, a pinch of turmeric and water. Tempered the Dal with Cumin seeds, Dry Red Chillies and 1 fat clove of garlic roughly sliced. Wanted to add some cranberries but wasn't convinced...yet.

Pepper Chicken Curry -- This is one more of my favorite chicken curry from Sailaja's blog. Chicken doesn't taste good if cooked ahead so this just survived Sunday evening and Monday.

Looking back it seems like we had a lot of potatoes last week, this week I am going to cut down on it. Also hope to revisit this menu again as all the dishes were pretty good.

I am typing this as I glance at Sex and the City re-runs. We don't have HBO and I had not watched it before. Some Fridays if I am still awake I force myself to wtach it because I really want to understand why people liked it so much. The more I watch it the crappier it seems !!!

LOL @ "one of whom craves attention like Jennifer Aniston and other who voices protests akin to Mamta (banerjee)"

Reminds me of good old days. Trisha was very talkative and naughty but Tushar was very calm and very quiet happy baby. American women used to look at him sitting in the high chair like a saint and say "look at his eyes, he is an old soul!" :DEnjoy the girls, they grow up so fast, making me tear up now.Yummy weekly menu! :)

are you having a good weekend? :) Today dad-in-law from kolkata put the fone receiver near the t.v so we could hear The Great Mamata sing!! Yes, that`s what she was doing today - on national tv. Still better than her calls for protests!!

What??? You don't like SATC???? :) Oh come on Sandeepa, don't take it too seriously, just watch it for what it is, a great time pass... With all those beautiful clothes and shoes and bags it can't be boring now, can it? :)

Ah, but everything is relative dear sandeepa! I wish I had as delightful a menu as you detailed here! Thanks to you I think I'll make aloo methi from your recipe. I got some methi -- looks nice, too, from the store this weekend but did not want it in dal. I have plenty of potatoes.

I see about the same scene from my deck these days, snow and bleak woods bare of leaves. Maybe you would like a bird feeder to liven things up? This is january, february is a short month, and march is spring, garden time right :)

I remember the first snap from one of your posts .. the second one looks real dreary. But the menu sounds good Sandeepa. :-)And your cutie pies sounds real cute. That was some definition for them .. JA I can take ... M Banerjee? :-) LOL.

Hi Sandeepa. I liked ur style of writing, may be one day you should try to write a book.

For me i am a indian bachelor (staying alone in US ha ha ha..) and trying to cook. I got bugged with this american way of foods and now atlast for the past 2 weeks i have tried many dishes. I never cooked in my life befvore by my friends say i ahve the touch. I like the combinatiosn u had in your menue. May be this week let me try that.

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Predominantly a Bong, who loves being a Mom and loves to cook among other things for the li'l one and the big ones.She loves to write too and you will find her food spiced up with stories. Mainly a collection of Bengali Recipes with other kinds thrown in, in good measure. A Snapshot of Bengali Cuisine